NOVEMBER
2004
Don't miss the UK Premiere of Rogério Sganzerla's
films O Bandido da Luz Vermelha and Brasil.
Followed by a Q&A session with his wife Helena Ignez
and their daughter Djin Sganzerla.
Friday
26 November, at 6.15pm - Screening of Brasil
and The Red Light Bandit followed by Q&A session
(40 minutes duration)
The Q&A session will be chaired by Adriana Rouanet,
Lecturer on Brazilian Culture and Cinema at Queen Mary,
University of London and Brazilian Contemporary Arts
(BCA). |
|
Monday
29 November, at 8.45pm - Screening of Brasil
and The Red Light Bandit
followed by informal talk (20 minutes duration)
The
informal talk will be hosted by Mr. Fernando Nonohay,
from King's College Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
Department.
@ Odeon Panton St, W1Y, Tube: Piccadilly Circus or Leicester
Square.
Bookings 0871 2244007 or www.odeon.co.uk
Tickets: £8 / £6 |
THE
RED LIGHT BANDIT (O BANDIDO DA LUZ VERMELHA)
Dir: Rogerio Sganzerla, Brazil, 1968, 92 minutes.
Based on
police records of a famous bandit in Sao Paolo, the
film tracks the rise of an enigmatic pillager of luxurious
residences whom the tabloids have named for his technique
of using a red flashlight to illuminate his female victim's
faces, while talking to them before proceeding to rape
and kill them. One of the key works of the Cinema Marginal,
with its "aesthetics of garbage", the late
Sganzerla combines western, detective story, documentary,
musical, comedy, science fiction and radical politics,
in the vein of Godard's gangster films... |
|
|
|
"The Red Light Bandit is Sganzerla's first feature
film. He was 22, he was a critic-cinephile and he tried
a rebellion - he went for it and he won. The film sets
new ground for blending aesthetics that one would never
think of mixing together: Orson Welles, Pierrot le Fou
and the structure of sensationalist radio broadcastings
of crime journalism. It's the first true example in
Brazilian cinema of an art-pop film. |
|
|
The Red Light Bandit is to some extent the cinematic
equivalent of the tropicalist movement in Brazilian
pop music (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze): a
logic of mixing high culture with scum, mass culture
with more elitist art, tradition with avant-garde, in
a cannibalistic strategy that seeks to devour everything
that is other or foreign in order to make it its own. |
Bandido
(Paulo Vilaça &
Sonia Braga) |
| "Whoever
wear shoes will not last", says the deranged character-title
of the film. This fixation on nearly prophetical, definitely
charismatic figures might get Sganzerla a little bit closer
to the work of Glauber Rocha. |
|
|
But, as it's a combat film, The Red Light Bandit makes
no friends: it's against Brazilian politicians, against
upper-class privileges and against the Cinema Novo,
turned institutional by the time and growingly innocuous."
(by Ruy Gardnier) |
BRASIL
(1981)
Documentary
- 12 min. - Colour
Directed by Rogério Sganzerla
Filmed
on location at the music studios during recordings of
João Gilberto, with the participation of Gilberto
Gil, Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia
Best Film editing award in Brasília Film Festival
1982. |
|
|
"I
have ideographically decomposed, through the editing
and following the music and lyrics of "Aquarela
do Brasil", a number of personalities originally
portrayed in the Brazilian Cine-News of the 40s: Getúlio
Vargas, Ary Barroso, Dorival Caymmi, Grande Otelo, Vinícius
de Moraes, Orson Welles, Richard Wilson, Eros Volusia,
the "jangadeiros" (jangada is a type of raft
used in the northeast of Brazil), Jacaré (José
Olimpio Meira), Jerônimo e Tatá. |
|
|
They
all parade in this short film that comemorates half
century of national life, represented in a borderline
situation (What is Brazil? What are the Brazilians?).
Brazil, as remarked by Oswald de Andrade in 1924, has
been under siege since its early stages of colonisation".
(Rogério Sganzerla) |
|
ROGÉRIO
SGANZERLA
Rogério Sganzerla, author of a considerable amount
of films and one of the most expressive exponents of
Brazilian independent cinema, was born in 1946 in the
small town of Joaçaba, in the Southern Brazilian
State of Santa Catarina. |
|
|
He started his carreer as a film critic at the Cultural
Supplement of the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo,
in the years 1964 and 1965. His first achievement as
a filmmaker was the short film "Documentário",
of 1967, for which he received an award for best short
film and as prize a trip to Cannes.
It was during this trip he started working on a filmscript
about a masked outlaw, capable of keeping a whole city
in panic, something unthinkable of in those days. |
Still on his way back to Brazil, on the boat, he laid
hand on Brazilian newspapers and read the headlines
about a certain 'red light bandit' that was terrorizing
São Paulo. He realized that his planned script
was on its way to gain real life. Along this line in
1968 his first full length film "The Red Light
Bandit" came into being, and soon became one of
the most awarded Brazilian films and on the spot was
concidered one of the 'classics' of national cinema.
|
|
In 1969 he filmed "The Woman of Everyone",
with in the mainroles the actress Helena Ignez (at the
time known as the "muse of new cinema") and
the comedian Jô Soares. This comedy, predecessor
of the 'pornochanchada' - highly erotic comedies - soon
became one of the biggest audience successes at the
time. |
|
In 1970, together with his colleague filmmaker Júlio
Bressane and Helena Ignez, he founded the well-known production
company Bel-Air, for which he produced and directed, among other
films, "Copacabana Mon Amour" (original soundtrack
by Gilberto Gil) and "Sem Essa, Aranha", never commercially
released and which became one of the most shown experimental
films in the international film festival circuit. Filmed in
only seven long takes the film is frequently named as one of
the classics of avant -garde cinema.
One of the first
persons to view the film, the composer Caetano Veloso, wrote
and composed the song "Qualquer Coisa", citing the
film and making its title well-known to the general public.
|
Among other films by Rogério Sganzerla is "Abismu"
(1977) with the actress Norma Benguell, and the trilogy
focussing on the films and the stay in Brazil of Orson
Welles: "Tudo é Brasil" (1997), "A
Linguagem de Orson Welles" (1991) and "Nem
Tudo é Verdade" (1986) |
Rogério
Sganzerla died on the 9th of January 2004, and his last film
is "The Sign of Chaos", finalized in 2003, in which
he exposed his revolt towards censurship of the political and
the commercial kind, in an antifilm, as the director himself
defines his last film.
Unfinished and new
projects left behind by the director are on its way, under the
coordination of the actress Helena Ignez, most significantly
the film "Luz das Trevas - A Revolta de Luz Vermelha",
a battering paraphrase on urban violence in modern Brazil.
HELENA IGNEZ
The actress and director is a prominent figure in the
Brazilian cultural panorama. She was involved in numerous
avant-garde movements and was known as the " Muse
of Cinema Novo".
Her
career debut happened in the theatre in Salvador, under
the direction of Eros Martin Gonçalves, where
she acted in a number of plays such as "Sara e
Tobias", by Paul Claudel. |
|
Still
in Salvador she worked with directors such as Gianni
Ratto and Charles Mac Gow. After moving to Rio de Janeiro
she carried on working with Martin Gonçalves
in the production of "Salome" by Oscar Wilde,
for which she received a newcomer-acting award.
Her
first cinema role came in 1959 with "O Patio",
the directorial debut of her future husband Gláuber
Rocha.She alternated theatre and film productions such
as "O assalto ao trem pagador" and "O
padre e a moça" (for which she won an award
in the Berlin Film Festival of 1967). |
|
With
"O Bandido da Luz Vermelha" and "Mulher de Todos",
by Rogério Sganzerla, she received numerous best actress
awards.
In
1970 she co-founded, with Rogério Sganzerla and Júlio
Bressane, the notorious production company Bel Air, where she
produced and co-directed films such as "A Miss e o Dinossauro"
and "Carnaval na Lama", as well as staring in "Sem
essa, Aranha" and "Copacabana Mon Amour" by Rogério
Sganzerla and "Cara a Cara" and "Família
do Barulho", by Júlio Bressane, all Bel Air productions.
Helena
Ignez also integrated the Centre for Popular Culture (Centro
de Cultura Popular) in Rio de Janeiro next to Vianninha and
Armando Costa. Under pressure by the military dictatorship in
Brasil she leaves the country to live in London, also travelling
around Europe and Africa.
In
1986 she stars in the film "Nem Tudo é Verdade",
by Rogério Sganzerla.In the 90s she travels around
Brasil with the group Living Theater.
She also takes part in several other theatre productions,
under the direction of Ulisses Cruz, Antonio Abujamra,
Regina Miranda, José Celso Martinez Corrêa,
amongst others. |
|
She
follows her film carrer with "Perigo Negro", by Rogério
Sganzerla and "Perfume de Gardênia", by Guilherme
Almeida Prado.
Helena Ignez also works in Globo television drama series such
as "Tereza Baptista" and
"Meu
Marido", as well as in the episode "Terra" of
the series "Você Decide" (script by Antônio
Callado).
In
1998 she directs and acts in the show "Cabaret Rimbaud
- Uma Temporada no Inferno", with performances all over
Brasil and in Spain (for this she received an award from the
Brazilian Ministry of Culture 1999).
She
follows her film carrer with "Perigo Negro", by Rogério
Sganzerla and "Perfume de Gardênia", by Guilherme
Almeida Prado.
Helena Ignez also works in Globo television drama series such
as "Tereza Baptista" and
"Meu
Marido", as well as in the episode "Terra" of
the series "Você Decide" (script by Antônio
Callado).
In
1998 she directs and acts in the show "Cabaret Rimbaud
- Uma Temporada no Inferno", with performances all over
Brasil and in Spain (for this she received an award from the
Brazilian Ministry of Culture 1999).
|
She
returns to the film screens in "São Jerônimo",
by Júlio Bressane and "O Signo do Caos",
by Rogério Sganzerla.
By
the end of 1999 she puts together the play "Savannah
Bay", by Marguerite Duras, with which she travels
around Brasil. |
In
2002 she returns to the stage in Rio de Janeiro with
the play "Os Sete Afluentes do Rio Ota", directed
by Monique Gardenberg, also presented in São
Paulo and Brasília.
Recently
she has directed the documentary "Reinvenção
da Rua", shot in São Paulo and New York.
Her
next film project is the feature "Luz nas Trevas
- Revolta de Luz Vermelha", a script by Rogério
Sganzerla that she hopes to direct.
|
|
BACK
TO DLA FILM FESTIVAL 2004 |
